


Nights are fair drawing in

by lauraflaura



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Dramedy, F/M, Post-Series, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 21:48:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7071799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauraflaura/pseuds/lauraflaura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was why Buffy didn’t dispense with the declarations of love! You tell a guy you love him and what happens? He accuses you of lying and then spends the next year pretending to be dead.    </p>
<p>Post-series reunion fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights are fair drawing in

**Author's Note:**

> My first Buffy fic! Inspired by my dissatisfaction with the reunion in the Buffy comics! Fairly typical post-series reunion fic. Some elements were ~~plagiarized from~~ inspired by the comics, but if you are looking for a comics-compliant fic, this is definitely not that. Self-beta'd, so feel free to point out any errors you notice. 
> 
> The first chapter is really long. The rest of the chapters will probably be less-long.

**_Buffy Vs. The Six Stages of Grief_ **

 

**_September 2004  
Eilean Ledaig, Inner Hebrides _ **

Buffy gave one last grunt of effort as she swung the Scythe down in a wide, whistling arc and sliced off the blue demon’s head in a single blow. The head spiraled down, the body falling after it, and with a final _sploosh_ they both sunk beneath the surface of the tidal pool and melted into an amorphous cloud of blue slime.

“Okay!” said Buffy in tones of forced-cheeriness, turning to face the cluster of teenage girls lounging around on the large boulders that made up the rocky shoreline. “So, that’s how you kill one of these things. And, hey, fun fact: if you’re not sure how to kill something, beheading is usually pretty fool-proof. Any questions?”

Buffy shifted her weight and tried to pretend she couldn’t hear the sound of water sloshing in her left boot. There’d been a misstep and a misjudgment of water depths and one of her boots was filled to the brim with seawater. Apart from that, it had been pretty straightforward, Slaying-wise, but she was in pretty desperate need of a shower, a change of clothes, and a nap, in that order so she really hoped that, for once, the girls didn’t feel the need to ask a million questions, each further off-topic than the last.

Predictably, Mavis’s hand was the first into the air. Buffy’s mind heaved a great sigh. So much for that. 

“According to my research,” Mavis said, peering down her over-sized, early-90s spectacles at some very thick and very boring-looking tome she’d actually _brought with her_ on the outing, “the _Na Fear Gorm_ , also called sea kelpies or the Blue men of the Mirch, are sentient water-dwelling creatures with a complex social structure, capable of near-human intelligence. How, then, are we as Slayers, the protectors of all that is moral and good within the supernatural world, supposed to view the hunting and killing these creatures as little more than systematic murder?”

“Um,” said Buffy, casting a glance at the blue scum on the surface of the water to buy time while her brain processed Mavis’s argument.

“Girl, get a grip,” scoffed Ashleigh. “They’re, like, eating humans and stuff. That blue dude was waiting in the shallows to chomp on human flesh. Why do you think we kill vampires? It’s, like, the same thing.”

“Right!’ Buffy said, nodding. “We’re here to stop people getting killed. That’s basically the whole point of the Slayer gig, protecting humans, and sometimes we have to kill, um, sentient creatures to do it. Any more questions?” _God, I hope not._

“Ooh! Ooh!” crowed Zoe, thrusting her fist into the air, a truly shocking number of Livestrong wristbands jangling on her raised wrist. “I have one! Do vampires have semen?”

“Do who have _what?”_

“Vampires. Semen,” Zoe repeated bluntly, apparently immune to the sort of sex-related embarrassment most teenage girls would feel, especially around awesome ladies they supposedly looked up to as a mentor and role model. “I mean, they can’t have kids, right? And since they don’t pee, either, or sweat—” 

“They do.”

“Huh?”

“Vampires,” Buffy started elaborating before her better judgement even had a chance to start flashing giant warning signals. “They sweat. Sometimes. But not so much from, you know, the heat or - or during, um…” _sex_ “...exercise but when they’re anxious or stressed, there can be some perspiration.”

“Okay,” said Zoe with a thoughtful tilt of her head, “so sometimes they sweat. But what about semen?”

Buffy struggled to keep her face an expressionless mask, even as she felt the flush creeping up the back of her neck. “I … don’t know,” she said carefully. “Guys, I was really just looking for questions about the whole dead demon situation—”  

“But didn’t you _date_ a vampire?” Lisa asked.

“More than one,” Juniper piped up helpfully, sending Zoe into a flurry of nods. “There was more than one, right?”  

“I—” Buffy grimaced. What was the appropriate response here? She wasn’t _ashamed,_ exactly, of her past dating choices, but she didn’t want the new Slayers to get any wild ideas that vampires could be good for activities that weren’t driving pointy wooden stakes into their chests.

And, yeah, Buffy had dated – if you could even call it that – two vampires, but there were circumstances! It wasn’t like Buffy was some big ho bag for the not-so-warm male form. It wasn’t like every time she fought a vamp, she was one second away from jumping his undead bones.

Um, _no._ She hadn’t even _known_ Angel was a vampire until after she’d already fallen for him, and Spike – well, OK, so she’d known Spike was a vampire, pretty much from the moment they met. But she’d known him for years before she’d gotten the urge to do anything more than stake him, and it wasn’t until he’d started to _change_ into something _better_ that she’d even begun to—

A sharp pain squeezed in her chest and for a moment, Buffy couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. She stood there in front of the gaggle of Slayers she was supposed to be mentoring, her mouth suspended half-open, the Scythe hanging limply in the other, and let the full weight of Spike’s absence roll over her.

It happened, sometimes, when she thought about Spike. Not all the time; it wasn’t like she was still crying into her pillow every night over her lost love, all bereft and weepy. Most of the time, she was … well, she wasn’t exactly _over_ it. Buffy had enough experience with losing people she loved at this point to know it wasn’t something you ever really got over, but she’d gotten used to it, at least. Most of the time, anyway.  

Most days when she thought about Spike, she remembered him fondly. She could think about him and instead of being miserable, she could just be glad that he’d been part of her life, and she could be proud of what he’d done for the world, and for her. She was just full of fondness and pride. Practically overflowing with all that calm acceptance.

But sometimes … God, sometimes she’d think about him and she missed him so hard it felt like getting punched in the chest by a super-strong large-fisted demon that knocked the wind out of her lungs and left her dazed and aching.

***

**_May 2003  
Southern California, USA_ **

For one wonderful, terrible moment, the feeling of elation lingered.

_“Spike? You’re here! But I thought—”_

_“Thought what? C’mon, luv. Oughta know by now it takes more than a shiny bit of mystical tat to get rid of me.”_

The dream had, in retrospect, been as wacky and nonsensical as any other, but the _sensations._ Soft leather under her fingertips. The weight of his hand on her back. The smell of cigarettes and off-brand laundry detergent. It had all been so vivid, felt _so real_ , that Buffy, still half asleep, immediately turned onto her side and stretched out her arm to reach for the slumbering body she was sure would be there.

Her fingers slid across a smooth, empty expanse of bedsheets and reality came flooding back with such devastating force, it felt like the wind had been knocked out of her.

Spike was dead.  

It wasn’t until that moment that the full magnitude of the loss really hit her.

In the hours after it happened, it was actually pretty easy _not_ to think about Spike, or the fact that her house and all her worldly possessions - shoes, cute outfits, baby pictures, Mr. Gordo, the finest collection of wooden stakes in all of California, maybe America, possibly the world - had collapsed into the Hellmouth. There had been this whole thing with getting the wounded to the hospital and between getting her own stab wound stitched up and checking on Robin and the handful of injured Former-Potentials-Now-Slayers, it wasn’t like there was a huge abundance of spare moments to dwell on the fact that the guy she loved was ashes underneath the rubble that used to be her home.

And now, as she lay on her back in some crappy motel in the next town over, wearing an oversized Dollar Store t-shirt that itched and smelled vaguely chemical, while an ancient air conditioner unit rumbled in the corner, her grief slammed into her like a battering ram.

Spike was _gone._ And it wasn’t like last summer, when he’d disappeared for months on his soul-quest, or after he helped her stop Angelus and swore he and Drusilla would never come back only to show up drunk and crying in her mother’s kitchen a few months later. This time he wasn’t _coming back,_ not _ever._ Burnt up, turned to dust, _gone._

Buffy was so proud of Spike for proving himself to be the man she always (well, for the past few months, anyway) knew he was. She knew she should be grateful, she knew she shouldn’t cheapen his sacrifice by wishing he hadn’t done it, but in that moment, it didn’t seem to matter.

In that moment, it just _hurt._

“Buffy?”

The lamp on the bedside table clicked on and the sudden flare of light was almost blinding. Dawn was sitting up in the next bed, one hand on the lamp switch, squinting at Buffy with a concerned expression that furrowed her brow.

“Buffy?” Dawn said again. “You OK?” 

Buffy didn’t want to bug Dawn with her stupid masochistic subconscious and intense Spike miss-age; Dawn had enough to worry about, what with losing their home and all, and Amanda, and Chao-Anh and Anya, and she’d definitely earned a good night’s sleep. She opened her mouth, aiming for an answer in the vicinity of, “Yeah, I’m fine, go back to sleep,” but all the grief she’d tried not to feel in the afternoon’s assorted chaos seemed to have converged in her throat, so thick she felt as though she was choking on it.

Buffy’s vision swam and the next thing she knew she was crying, her entire body shuddering with the force of the sobs. Her eyes were so blurred with tears; she couldn’t even see Dawn anymore, just the watery yellow-brown blur of the lamp-lit motel room. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried like this; heaving, painful sobs that seemed to tear up her chest and throat as they shuddered through her body.

Dawn, it turned out, had gotten really good at comforting her crying sister. Way better than any girl of just sixteen ought to have been, anyway, which was a testament to how crappy the last few years of their lives had been. Without a single word – at least not any words that Buffy could hear over her own sobbing – Dawn got out of her bed and snuggled up to Buffy, wrapping her arms around her and stroking her hair with a motion that was so reminiscent of their mom that Buffy cried even harder.

***

 

**_September 2004  
Eilean Ledaig_ **

“Buffy? Erm, Buffy? Hello?”

“Huh? What?” The water slopped around in Buffy’s boot as she gave herself a little shake.

The girls were all staring down at her from their boulder perches like she had gone completely insane. Oh. Right. The nightly group-patrol-slash-slaying-demonstration. Not the best place for mopey musings.

Buffy opened her mouth and sucked in some air, ready to deliver a cool and clever line that would reassure the Slayers in Training that she totally hadn’t just zoned out for a full minute and was totally, definitely paying attention – really, she was – when one of the girls, whose name was definitely something like Caroline or Carolyn, blurted out, “Can we go now? It’s practically morning.”

“Yes!” Buffy tried not to sound too eager, but between her water-logged boot, and the weird, inappropriate questions about vampire bodily fluids, and the latest ambush by her Spike-related grief, she was so done with this lesson. “You know what? Yeah. I think we can end it there for today.” 

Sure enough, the promise of warm beds and hot water was more tempting to the Baby Slayers than Vampire Health Class. With a symphony of metallic clangs, the girls gathered up their assorted weaponry and clambered up the shoreline towards the house without so much as a glance back at their hallowed mentor.

Buffy watched them go with a sigh, dropping onto a nearby rock to shake the water out of her boot. The boots were just some crummy old pair of rubber rain boots, not the stylish-yet-affordable leather ones she’d favored back in Sunnydale. Buffy didn’t wear nice boots on these outings anymore; she’d learned _that_ lesson the hard way, about two hours into her first day.

And then, Slayer senses be damned, she looked up and found Zoe staring at her with big, curious eyes, and startled so badly, she almost fell sideways off her perch.

“Okay, so do they have semen or not?”

“You know what?” said Buffy, shoving her wet leg back into her soggy boot and gathering up her Scythe. “You don’t need to know. You just gotta stake ‘em.”

“Aw, man,” huffed Zoe. “Okay, but can vampires, y’know, get it up? Because Mr. Haynes said they don’t have circulation and when we did Sex Ed in middle school—”

“Zoe…” Buffy sighed. “Just, go to bed.”

“Ugh, fine,” Zoe scoffed. “Lame.” With a seriously overdramatic flip of her hair, Zoe turned and flounced off after her fellow Slayers, leaving Buffy to follow in her wake, alone. 

Feeling not-so-much in the mood to spend the walk back to Cailleach House listening to a gaggle of teenage girls, Buffy didn’t try so hard to catch up to her charges. As badly as she wanted to get out of her wet boot, she kept her pace in the medium-slow range and let the girls disappear from view. Living with twelve teenage girls – well, thirteen, if you included Dawn – did not allow for a huge abundance of quiet time. Buffy had to take what she could get, even when what she could get wasn’t so quiet, with the distant clatter of smack-talk and giggling still pretty audible, and with all the songbirds deciding the best way to greet the coming dawn was to start chirping up a storm. 

As the darkness softened into a fuzzy blue-grey, Buffy slowly squelched her way back along the winding country lane. She skirted around the cattle grid at the bottom of the drive, and slipped through the wrought-iron gate, past the brass plaque embossed with the designation, “Cailleach House”.  

“House” was kind of a misnomer. The new Slayer Training Center wasn’t so much a house as it was a _mansion._ Or did they call them “manors” here? Actually, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to call the place a _castle._ The “house” was frickin’ huge; four stories’ worth of neatly-joined sandstone and slate, and enough bedrooms and bathrooms to keep quarters from being too-close-for-comfort even with the number of occupants nearing twenty on any given night. There were turrets! It was pretty old, too. Buffy wasn’t sure how old, exactly; if Giles had told her, she didn’t remember and historical architecture definitely wasn’t her thing. 1700s? 1800s? Somewhere in there, probably. The masonry was pretty uniform and non-crumbly, but the walls were _thick_ , like at least a foot thick, so every window had its own little ledge underneath. Buffy was pretty sure she’d heard somewhere that they made buildings like that back before there was heating and AC, to keep the rooms from getting too hot or too cold. Also, some of the toilets had weird pulley things instead of handles.    

The whole place had belonged to a Watcher, one of the many who’d died in the explosion. From what Buffy remembered of Giles’ explanation, the house/castle had been in his family for generations, and since he’d basically had no life outside his Watchering, he’d bequeathed the property to the Council in his will.    

Buffy made her way up the sloping lawns, now wet with morning dew, in the twilight, her head full of visions of warm baths and dry pajamas. The girls had already disappeared inside the house, though Buffy could still hear the unmistakable sound of twelve pairs of feet thundering around on the stairs.

Sighing the sigh of the cold and exhausted, Buffy let herself in through the heavy blue-lacquered front door and almost smacked the person standing on the other side with it.

 “Dawn!” Buffy spluttered in surprise.

Dawn staggered back to avoid getting walloped in the forehead with the door’s hard edge. Backlit by the muted yellow light that lit the hall, her shiny curtain of hair glinted as it swished back into place. She stood on the edge of the doormat, her eyes wide with surprise, a tangle of discarded rain boots lying at her feet like battlefield casualties. A backpack hung from over one shoulder and a small carry-on sized suitcase was resting against her left heel.

“Buffy!” Dawn bit her lip and shuffled a little in place, hoisting her bag a little higher on her shoulder. “Um, hey, are you back from your outing already?”

“Dawn!” Buffy said again, sliding smoothly into her Responsible Older Sister voice the way it often did when Dawn made questionable choices. “What the hell are you still doing here? Weren’t you were supposed to leave, like, twenty minutes ago? If you miss your flight—”

“God, Buffy, would you relax?” Dawn rolled her eyes. “I have plenty of time, OK? Mrs. MacGregor was just about to drive me to the ferry. And, hey, no need to be glad or anything that you actually get to say goodbye to me.”

Some snappy retorts from the Chain Reaction of Lateness and Dangers of Flight Missage school of snappy retorts rose to the tip of Buffy’s tongue, but she swallowed them down, mostly because she had more important last minute wisdom to impart on her little sister, now that she had the chance.

“And you’re sure you have everything?” Buffy blurted out before she realized how totally lame and overbearing that sounded. Dawn certainly thought so, judging by the raised-eyebrow expression she flashed Buffy’s way. “Neck pillow? Passport? Money for a cab in case Dad—”

“Yes, yes, and _yes,”_ Dawn sighed, with another eyeroll. “You know I’m 18 now, right? As in legal adult? As in I kinda know how to pack a suitcase?”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with? I could probably still get a flight—”

Dawn scoffed and rolled her eyes for the third time in as many minutes. Buffy’s shoulders relaxed as her body released a fizzle of tension she hadn’t even realized was there. Hadn’t realized, but was still not-all-that-surprised by. The thing was, while LA had been Buffy’s home for 16 years, and while she was totally prepared to suck it up and tag along if Dawn decided she wanted a slightly more reliable presence than their flighty father, a trip to LA meant an almost-inevitable run-in with certain souled vampire ex-boyfriends.

Just the thought of seeing Angel made Buffy’s joints tingle uneasily. She hadn’t seen him since that night in Sunnydale, over two years ago, when he’d given her that stupid amulet. The amulet that saved the day when the newly-called Slayer army couldn’t, at the heavy, heavy price of Spike’s (un)life.  

She knew it was unfair – irrational – _hypocritical_ – to feel any kind of _blame-_ type emotions towards Angel; it wasn’t like he’d _known_ what the amulet was gonna go. He’d wanted to wear it himself, even, and he _had_ told her it could be dangerous; _she_ was the idiot who’d taken it, handed it over to Spike with barely a warning. And _Spike_ had insisted on wearing the thing, had let it burn him up. And if Angel _hadn’t_ shown up with the amulet, the First might have won. The Ubervamps would have wiped out the Slayer line, and then the First would have wielded its First-y badness on the wider populace.

They’d _all_ had a hand in what happened to Spike, and Buffy totally got that – she did – but for some reason, all her resentment-related feelings were swirling around Angel.

After Sunnydale, when they were all living out of a Motel 6 in the next town over, Willow had made with the suggestions about heading over to LA, staying in Angel’s hotel, there was definitely enough room. Buffy had been struck with an intense wave of do-not-want, but she didn’t say anything, mostly because Giles beat her to it. He’d given some vague excuses and, at the time, Buffy had chalked it up to general Angel-centric dislike, but she’d since learned that Giles’ coolness towards Angel wasn’t so much based on what he’d done as Angelus five years earlier, but some super-sketchy deal he’d made with some law firm that was apparently evil incarnate. If it hadn’t been for the loss of her home and her not-boyfriend and all the newly-called Slayers in need of guidance, she might have marched right into his shiny new office and given him what-for. As it was, she hadn’t really had the time or the emotional energy to confronting her ex-boyfriend, about the lawyer thing, or about any other crimes he may or may not have been vaguely responsible for.

“No, you can’t,” Dawn said shortly. “You have Baby Slayers to mentor, remember? And, also, didn’t we just go over the whole I’m-an-adult-now aspect? Don’t really need a babysitter.”

“It’s just, LA is kinda demon-y! Angel made a living because of how demon-y it is! And you _are_ kinda like this magnet for supernatural-badness and kidnappings and near-death experiences, so I just thought—”

“I don’t need a bodyguard, either. C’mon, Buffy, it’s not like I’m gonna be roaming the streets or whatever. I’m _mostly_ just gonna be visiting colleges. _Normal_ colleges. The non-Hellmouthy kind that _don’t_ have top-secret military bases underneath them.”

“I know,” said Buffy. “I know. Just – don’t go out without a stake. Don’t go out after dark, period. Don’t go into dark alleys. Don’t talk to pale guys. If you hear screaming, run _away_ from it. Don’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, the stake is not the power, etcetera. I’ve _more_ than got it. I _did_ grow up on the Hellmouth.”

Headlights flared behind Buffy as the Council’s somewhat-shabby Defender pulled into the drive, gravel crunching under its tires. Two sharp toots of the horn announced its arrival.

Dawn waved at the car and hitched her bag higher. “There’s Mrs. MacGregor. I guess that’s my cue.”

She and Buffy shared a quick hug in the doorway and exchanged the customary, “Have a safe flight,” and “I’ll see you next week,” and “Say hi to Dad for me.”

When Dawn was gone, Buffy went inside to do the shower-and-sleep thing before she had to be up again that afternoon to do some more mentoring.

Dawn had only been gone a few minutes, but her absence was already weighing on Buffy’s mood as she made the three-staircase hike up to her room. It wasn’t like Buffy wasn’t _happy_ for her sister; she totally was! When Buffy had been in high school, she’d been way too busy with the world-saveage to even go to the prospective student events at the colleges _nearby,_ so she was glad Dawn would at least have one normal high school experience after a year’s worth of decidedly abnormal educational experiences.  

It was gonna be a pretty lonely week without Dawn around, that was for sure. These days, Dawn was the only consistent support system Buffy _had_.

***

**_October 2003  
Bath, England, UK _ **

“What d’you mean, _gone?”_ Buffy stood in the foyer of Giles’ flat in Bath. Her skin was still glowing with a healthy, Mediterranean tan and her suitcase stood beside her, packed so full of new clothes and shoes, these was a serious danger of it bursting at the seams. Hey, her entire wardrobe had been swallowed into a crater, OK? If anyone deserved a suitcase full of new clothes, it was Buffy.

It had been five months since the Sunnydale Hellmouth had collapsed into itself. Five months since _Spike had died to close the Sunnydale Hellmouth._ It was still kind of painful to think about it in terms of Spike’s sacrifice, but Buffy didn’t want to _not_ think about it. Spike had died a hero. Buffy didn’t want to _not_ honor his sacrifice and pretend it hadn’t happened. He’d closed the Hellmouth, saved the Slayer line, given her the strength the share her power…

And now, with all the Potential Slayers now fully inducted into the whole having-of-superpowers thing and Faith no longer incarcerated, Buffy didn’t have to carry the burden of Slayerhood alone anymore. She could do anything she wanted! She could help Giles reestablish the Council, or go back to college, or be a fireman, or a plumber, or a wildlife photographer or - anything! Anything at all! For all the effort Spike put into dragging her down into the dark two years ago, his final gift to her had been to push her into the light.

She’d spent one week in the Motel 6, then one week squished into Giles’ two-bedroom flat in Bath with Giles, Dawn, Xander, Willow, Kennedy and Andrew. And by that point, she’d had way more than enough experience living in cramped conditions, so she’d taken Dawn and a generous advance on her Council of Watchers’ paycheck (from Giles’ personal account, technically, since the Council’s funds had still been tangled up in some legal issues back then) and headed off to continental Europe for some much-needed R&R.

And so, with her newfound freedom all newfound and freedom-y, Buffy had spent most of those four months travelling in Europe with Dawn, finally getting to do that whole “live like a person” thing the Slayer gig was so naturally opposed to.

Four months of beach-laying and nightclubs and epic shopping sprees and Buffy had started to feel restless in a way she hadn’t since that last summer before her mom died and worries of Dawn and Glory and dying and the non-stop stress-a-thon of the next two years pretty much burned up any excess energy she had. The past few weeks, Buffy had found herself itching to wield the might of her Scythe against some supernatural baddies. Being the Slayer wasn’t just some job she’d been shackled to against her will, it was who she was. Kendra had told Buffy that six years ago, but she’d never given the message much thought before now, now that she’d been given the opportunity to opt out of the Slayer life and realized she couldn’t.

And now, she was back in Bath, standing in the foyer of Giles’ flat with her tan and her suitcase, ready to recommit to the Slay-age gig only to have Giles tell her that her friends had moved on to bigger and better things. 

“There are now over a _thousand_ activated Slayers, spread all over the world, Buffy,” said Giles, “and with the Council largely destroyed, they were needed elsewhere.”  

“I thought – Willow said she was going to spend time with the Devon coven.”

Giles cleaned his glasses in typical Giles-ian fashion. “Yes, well,” he said evenly, “Kennedy volunteered to direct the Council operations in South America. I believe she asked Willow to accompany her.”

“And – and Xander?”

“There is a retired Watcher in South Africa,” Giles explained patiently, “I thought could be persuaded to rejoin the Council now that it is under new management.”

“So you sent _Xander?”_

Giles looked at Buffy in mild surprise. “He volunteered, Buffy. And, I admit, while Xander might not have been the obvious choice, he has become quite adept in the past few years. He stopped Willow from destroying the world, after all. And the Watcher he’s been sent to collect left the Council based on not-entirely-baseless grievances he had with Travers’ management style. No doubt Xander will convince him we’re running an entirely different operation these days.”

“It’s not _that,”_ Buffy tried to explain. “I just— I mean, after Anya…” From what she’d had been able to glean during those first few post-Sunnydale weeks, Xander was definitely still grieving for Anya. He hadn’t said as much, and he’d put a strong effort into maintaining his usual goofy, playful persona, but there had been some moments of broody sadness that were pretty impossible to overlook. Xander should be surrounded by people who care about him, not roaming around Africa by himself.

 Giles eyed her seriously over the tops of his glasses. “We didn’t discuss it, though I suspect he wanted the time to himself to come to terms with the loss, or perhaps he thought the mission might distract him from thinking about it. People grieve in different ways, Buffy,” he finished, his voice suddenly soft and sympathetic. As if he’d only just realized she also had someone to mourn.

“I—” Buffy’s throat felt swollen with a sudden rush of sorrow. She swallowed past the lump and forced her words out, “Yeah. No, you’re right, Giles. Sorry for wigging out, I guess I was just looking forward to seeing them. No big. I’m just gonna take my suitcase upstairs. Can I use your shower?”  

***

After her shower, Buffy came back downstairs in her pajamas and robe and sat at the kitchen table with Giles. Giles asked her if she wanted any supper. She didn’t. Giles made some tea instead and they sat drinking it while the sky grew darker.  It was early evening now, and the sky outside the kitchen window was almost completely dark, but for a brilliant streak of pink-orange along the horizon. Xander and Willow’s absences – as well as Dawn’s, since she’d elected to spend a few days in London helping Andrew translate what remained of the Council archives –weighed heavily on Buffy’s spirits, but she tried not to let it show as she babbled animatedly about all the places she and Dawn had visited in their Pan-European adventure.

Things between Buffy and Giles were better now than they had been last spring. Buffy didn’t think she could ever fully trust him again, not now that she knew exactly what kinds of things he was willing to do “for the greater good”, but he’d since apologized for what he’d helped Wood do to Spike, and she’d pretty much accepted that as one of Giles’ flaws. Not a huge enough flaw to justify cutting her main father figure out of her life completely, but something to definitely earn him the occasional wary side-eye.   

 “Well,” said Giles, once Buffy had finished describing that afternoon’s Paris-London flight, “now that you’re back from holiday, I had wondered if you’d had any thoughts about what you might like to do now. Rest assured, Buffy, you’ve given more than enough to the cause for a rather generous retirement package, if that’s what you’d like. If you’d like to continue university, or travel more, I’m sure the Council’s immense bank account could provide a stipend—”

“You got access to the Council’s bank account?” Buffy asked, surprised.

“Er, well, no, not yet,” Giles admitted. He was cleaning his classes again. “Those blasted lawyers are still contesting my authority, unfortunately, but I’ve been assured that it’s only a matter of time before everything goes through. It should be sorted well before the next academic semester starts, in any case—”

“Um, that’s great, Giles,” said Buffy. “I mean, I really appreciate the offer and everything, but I’m not going back to college. I had a lot of time to depressurize these past five months, get used to all this new stuff, and I’ve decided I still want to be a Slayer. I still _am_ a Slayer.”   

“Are you certain?” Giles probed gently. “The last few years have not been easy on you, Buffy; no one would begrudge you taking time off. We certainly have enough Slayers to cover for you.”

“I know,” said Buffy, “and the whole semi-annual Apocalypse Watch, and people getting killed, and the dying young; those are things I _definitely_ won’t miss. But, I thought that maybe, with all the new Slayers, and the new Council, there could be some kind of medium-intensity Slaying gig. Where I could, y’know, be away from all the intense Hellmouthy drama, but still slay the occasional demon, and – and maybe mentor some of the girls? And where I get some kind of regular paycheck. Not like, NBA money, but enough so I can have a place to live, and food to eat, and the occasional new outfit.”

“You want to work for the Council,” Giles clarified.

“Yeah. Preferably somewhere where they speak English,” Unlike Dawn, who was apparently some kind of linguistic genius, Buffy did not have any innate language-learning ability, if her experiences in high school French class were anything to go by, “and I don’t have to filter the water before I drink it.”

“Yes, well,” Giles had a slight smile on his face now, “I have been toying with the idea of establishing a Training Center, for some of the new Slayers. You could take a position there, mentoring the girls. It would likely involve killing the occasional demon. Perhaps that would be the sort of medium-intensity situation you had in mind?”

“Oh,” said Buffy, faintly surprised. She hadn’t expected Giles to rattle off a viable solution so quickly. “I mean, yeah, that pretty much fits.”

 “This is still all very preliminary, of course, it is rather contingent on being granted access to the Council’s accounts and properties, but, how do you feel about Scotland?”

***

****_September 2004_  
Cailleach House  
Eilean Ledaig 

Buffy caught a good few hours of sleep that morning, swaddled in a cocoon of blankets in her room at the top of the house. She’d gotten ready for bed in a room bathed in blue twilight and when she woke, around midday, the room was bright with indirect light filtering through the cracks in the curtains.

Once she was dressed, Buffy slowly made her way down the spiral staircase to the kitchen. The weather was, apparently, warmer than usual (though Buffy was pretty sure it would have classified as winter in California) and it seemed as though every window she passed was open, so she could hear the shrieks and shouts of the girls, who were learning some exercise drill from one of the Watchers, on the lawn.

She headed for the kitchen, fixin’ for a bowl of cereal and some caffeinated goodness while the girls were outside. A swarm of hungry teenage girls, clattering around the kitchen while she was still not totally awake? _Not_ a winning combination.

Buffy strolled through the kitchen door and staggered to a dead stop when she found a spot at the kitchen table occupied by a familiar shock of red hair.

“Buffy!” Willow beamed when she saw Buffy standing there, the same old adorable Willow-grin, and practically leapt from her chair in her haste to wrap Buffy in a hug.

“Willow!” Buffy tried to say, though it came out more like “Whhhfff” because her mouth was mashed up against Willow’s shoulder. It was a little surreal; she and Willow had spoken on the phone a handful of times, and there had been emails, but there’d been no in-person contact in over a year, and now here she was. Actually here, all red hair and flowy hippie skirts, and the familiar Willowy smell of strawberries and ginseng.

“When did you get back from South America?” Buffy asked, as soon as Willow relented enough on the hugging front for her to speak properly.

“A few weeks ago,” Willow admitted, with a slightly sheepish quirk to her smile. “I’m working with the Devon coven now. And – and I wanted to call, but then I thought I should visit instead, and – and maybe it could be a surprise. So, are you? Surprised?”

Buffy, whose face had been kinda frozen with shock up until this point, finally managed a grin. “ _Totally_ surprised,” she confirmed with a nod.

“Wow,” said Willow. “Little Dawnie, getting ready for college. Call me crazy, but it feels like it was just yesterday she was starting middle school.”

“Yup,” Buffy sighed, sinking into a kitchen chair. She planted an elbow on the tabletop and rested her chin in her palm. “Dawn’s all grown up, and pretty soon my nest will be empty. Well, if you don’t count the twelve teenage Slayers.”

“Yeah,” said Willow, reclaiming her own seat beside Buffy’s. “How’s that going, anyway? The mentoring? ‘Cause I gotta say, rural Scotland? Not really a place I pictured you.”

“Not really a place I pictured me either,” Buffy admitted. “Let’s just say, online shopping has become a close, personal friend. But, I mean, it’s not so bad. They’re good girls, for the most part. Kinda big with the inappropriate questions, and yelling, and not-so-big with the sharing, but they’re trying, you know? Plus, there are, like, no dateable guys up here and considering the last few years of my love life, I’m thinking that is _definitely_ of the good. I am _so_ done with relationship drama for, like, at least a few years.”

“That’s good, Buffy,” Willow said encouragingly. “That’s really good! I wish I’d done that, you know, after Tara. Looking back, I – I don’t think I was ready to date again, when Kennedy and I got together. I was still grieving and it wasn’t fair to either of us.”

“That’s kinda why I left South America,” she continued with a self-depreciating shrug. “Me and Ken weren’t working out, and then, there wasn’t really any reason for me to stay.”

“Oh, Willow,” Buffy leaned across in her chair and wrapped her arms around Willow’s shoulders. She’d never really _liked_ Kennedy, but Willow had, so it was basically her best-friendly duty not to act like she was at all pleased by this turn of events. “I’m really sorry. Are you OK?”

Willow gave a half-hearted smile and nodded. “Honestly, Buffy, I’m fine. I guess I always knew we weren’t long-term; you know? Things were tense between us for a while, so I guess in the end, I was kinda relived it was over.” She paused and a tiny, conflicted frown flickered across her face for a moment. Finally, she offered a tentative, “Are _you_ OK?”

Buffy stared. “Um, yeah,” she said slowly, eyeing Willow with a confused squint. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You know,” She flashed Buffy as smile that was equal parts awkward and encouraging, “because of Spike.” 

Buffy raised her eyebrows and stared some more. Willow … wanted to talk about Spike? The concept was more than a little surreal; she and Willow had been each other’s main confidants when it came to boys, once upon a time, but they’d never really discussed _Spike._ Talking about Spike in a romantic context with Willow was definitely a new experience. “Willow, that was over a year ago.”

“I know,” said Willow, her eyes wide and sympathetic, “and I wanted to ask then, before you left on vacation, but then with all the Council stuff, and I knew you were all grieve-y but I was so absorbed in my own stuff, I just _forgot_. I’m so, so sorry, Buffy. I’m the worst.”

“Willow, I’m fine, really,” said Buffy. “I mean, I’m still a little sad, but I’m mostly fine. I’m used to it, I guess. Him not being here.”

Willow dove in for the third hug of the day. “I never really asked,” she said as she pulled back, “those last two years in Sunnydale, what was going on between the two of you. Guess I’ve been kinda ball-droppy on the friendship front for a while now.”  

“No, Will, it wasn’t that,” Buffy shook her head. “Spike and me … we were kinda private, you know? I mean, at first, I was ashamed, and I didn’t want anyone to know, but then, even after everyone knew, I guess I was just so used to not talking about it. But I should’ve talked to you. If anyone could offer advice on nonconventional fallings in love, it’s you.” She paused for a moment, not sure if she should continue, then added, “I did, you know. Love him.”

“I know you did,” said Willow.

“You _knew?_ How did you know? _I_ didn’t even figure it out. Not until it was too late.”

Willow shrugged. “I did live in the same house with you guys for months. It was kinda hard to miss. I mean,” Willow smiled shyly all of a sudden, “he _got a soul_ for you. And – and how you were always down in the basement with him… Buffy, everyone knew.”

A bubble of emotion had blossomed in Buffy’s throat and she had to fight to keep her voice even and her eyes tear-free. “God, Will,” she laughed thickly around the edge of a sob, “first Xander and Giles, now you? You guys couldn’t have approved of Spike when he was still alive?”  

“Sorry?” Willow smiled sympathetically, then froze, confusion contorting her open expression. “Wait, _Giles_ approves of Spike? I mean, I know Xander had kinda mellowed with the Spike-hate towards the end there, but Giles, too?”

“Yeah,” said Buffy, still a little watery. “A week after Sunnydale. He apologized for that thing with Wood, and he said I was right about Spike, because he’d proven he was a hero, and he should’ve trusted my instincts.”

“Wow,” Willow said. “I guess Giles is getting more forgiving in his old age. You know, he’s actually even talking about roping Angel into the Council network?”

“He _is?_ Even after all that super-sketchy stuff with the Council finances and Angel’s evil law firm?” 

“Yeah, see, it turns out Angel was actually working to bring down Wolfram & Hart from the inside. A few months ago, the whole LA branch just went—” Willow mimed an explosion with her hands. “And so now, the word on the supernatural grapevine is that Angel is back doing the whole help-the-helpless private detective agency thing. So I guess Giles thinks maybe we could, I dunno, consolidate our operations?”

“I dunno about _that,”_ said Buffy. “Angel’s kinda a loner. He went all this-town-ain’t-big-enough on me when I went to LA to deal with Faith after the whole bodyswap mess. He’s _so_ not gonna want to report to Giles.”

“OK, yeah, but at least we know he hasn’t gone evil again, right?” Willow pointed out. “I mean, at least I don’t have to re-soul him a third time. And, hey, even if he’s not _directly_ working with the Council, he’s still fighting the good fight. No need to send any Slayers to LA, ‘cause there’s the souled vampire champion is on the case.”

Buffy nodded absently and her gaze slipped from Willow’s face to her own left hand, lying palm-up on her thigh. “Yeah,” she said, as she traced the webbing between her fingers with her other hand. “Angel’s on the case.”


End file.
